The Power of Being Seen
Inside the Northampton studio where kids don’t have to smile, and parents finally see the child they know is in there.
This is what happens when a kid stops performing and starts being themselves.
The boy arrived with his arms crossed. He had hated having his picture taken since he was three.
School picture day had ended in a meltdown a few weeks earlier. That morning his mother had texted the studio to say it was touch and go whether they’d make it at all.
Sarah Prall’s reply was simple. Just come. Let him meet me. He can still say no.
He came. He sat down, folded his arms, and waited for the part where an adult tells him what to do with his face. It never came.
“So I understand you hate having your picture taken,” Sarah said. He looked at her as if she’d read his mind. “Well,” she said, “you’re sitting like this.” And she folded her own arms, and they talked about what our bodies say before we’ve said a word.
Then they talked about Vikings.
“That I’m not ugly”
He loved Vikings. He’d brought a bow and a crossbow. Sarah, who has been to Iceland five times and suspects she has Viking blood, handed him the bow.
She never told him how to sit. She asked him how he liked to sit, and photographed that. Then she asked for another way. Then another. At one point she put him in a long coat from the studio, deliberately too big. “It doesn’t fit him now,” she says. “But you can tell he’s going to become the man it fits.”
His mother watched from the couch, tears running down her face.
A week later, when they sat down to choose portraits, Sarah asked him what he most wanted to be able to see about himself. “That I’m not ugly,” he said. And if he could see that, what would it give him? “I don’t know. I’d just feel good. Like I could do anything.”
The portrait the family chose for their home shows a boy who looks like he’s about to leave on a quest.
Sometimes the parent needs to see it too
Not every session is about a child who hates the camera. One mother kept steering her daughter toward the gowns. The daughter kept saying no. Sarah backed the daughter, and photographed her as she is: beautiful, strong, with an energy that doesn't fit anyone's script.
When the mother saw the portraits, she said something Sarah hears often in different words. I just need to let my kid be who she is.
A fifteen-year-old answered every question with "I don't know" until Sarah sent her parents to the coffee shop next door. Then the real conversation started. At the end of the session, Sarah asked if she was surprised by what she saw on the camera. She wasn't. "This is who I was before everything happened," she said. "I'm just trying to get her back."
"Sometimes a child needs to see something they've never seen in themselves," Sarah says. "And sometimes they need to see that it's still there."
Why it ends up on the wall.
Sarah’s clients don’t leave with a folder of files. They leave with art: large prints for the walls, albums and keepsake boxes, made to museum standards and meant to last generations.
She calls wall art “the daily visual reminder.” One mother of a nonverbal boy chose a 40-inch portrait of her son for the living room: a split second of direct eye contact, the calm in the storm. She sits in front of it and says: there’s my boy.
Waiting at baggage claim at Heathrow, a stranger recognized Sarah. She had photographed the woman’s daughter twelve years earlier, as a baby. “Your photographs,” the woman said, “are the most precious thing we own.”
"The power of being seen is one thing. The power of being understood is another. Parents need to know there's a photographer who's actually looking for their child, not trying to force them into an experience."
How a session works.
It starts with a short call with the studio about your child: who they are, what’s going on for them, and what you hope they’ll see. Then comes the session itself in the Northampton studio, at your child’s pace, with no forced smiles and no pressure. About a week later you come back to see the portraits together and choose what you’ll keep.
Families travel from across Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and beyond for a session.
Our children’s portrait experiences are held at: 273 Pleasant St. Northampton, MA
Fill out the form below or Call (413) 570-8960
Open Monday through Friday, 9–5pm